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I too work for a large company that rolled out Kontiki. Like the previous poster mentioned Kontiki is a commercial, enterprise class BitTorrent like tool. We also use it to deliver video to the desktop. I havn't worked directly with those guys for years but believe you could use it for most any type of content. I believe they can handle your security needs as well as dynamically adjust how much bandwidth they are using based on a number of different criteria. I'd give them a call to at least inquire further. http://www.kontiki.com/

I work for a large company (>50,000 employees). IT recently rolled out a new "video delivery service." The system delivers videos to everyone's desktop. The system is designed by Kontiki. It's basically an enterprise BitTorrent tool which Kontiki prefers to call, "peer-assisted."

According to this page on Kontiki's site:
http://help.kontiki.com/enduser/group.jsp?node=117 51 ... Ad-Aware, SpyBot, Pest Patrol, etc. don't consider Kontiki's software spyware. Unless the site is outright lying and the vendors do list Kontiki, I doubt those anti-spyware vendors are all wrong ...

Kontiki Grid Delivery employs a secure grid of PCs and servers, which deliver content with a high level of network efficiency and centralized control. In grid delivery, content is delivered to a user not only from the server where it originates, but also from any number of network-connected computers that also have copies of the requested content. The Kontiki Delivery Grid dynamically optimizes delivery from many PCs and media servers by caching content at the very edge of the network. This creates network efficiency gains of 10 to 25 times over traditional approaches.

System Requirements:
(These are the minimum system requirements. Better performance will be seen on more powerful systems.)
  Pentium II 400Mhz (or faster recommended for optimal video playback)
  64MB of RAM
  2GB hard drive with 500MB of free space
  Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, or XP
  Internet Explorer 5.01 SP2 (or later), Netscape 4.7 or AOL 6.0 (or later)
  Windows Media Player 7, RealPlayer and Quicktime are recommended for the best experience
  A 56Kbps (or faster) Internet connection
Additional Requirements for using Secure Media and Document Control Features:
  Windows Media Player 7 or later for accessing files encrypted using Windows Media Rights Manager
  Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or later for accessing secure PDF documents

From the kontiki site follow. Looks like no Mac or Linux:

System Requirements:

(These are the minimum system requirements. Better performance will be seen on more powerful systems.)

        * Pentium II 400Mhz (or faster recommended for optimal video playback)
        * 64MB of RAM
        * 2GB hard drive with 500MB of free space
        * Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, or XP
        * Internet Explorer 5.01 SP2 (or later), Netscape 4.7 or AOL 6.0 (or later)
        * Windows Media Player 7, RealPlayer and Quicktime are recommended for the best experience
        * A 56Kbps (or faster) Internet connection

Additional Requirements for using Secure Media and Document Control Features:

        * Windows Media Player 7 or later for accessing files encrypted using Windows Media Rights Manager
        * Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or later for accessing secure PDF documents

FTFA-

"AOL is using file-sharing technology from Kontiki, a Silicon Valley company providing a similar system to the ambitious Internet video program of the BBC."

and a google search brought me here at Kontiki's page.

AOL says that since it will control the network, it can protect users from the sorts of viruses and spyware that infect other peer-to-peer systems.

Sounds like a challenge to me.

AOL is using file-sharing technology from Kontiki, a Silicon Valley company providing a similar system to the ambitious Internet video program of the BBC.

That's odd, I remember Kontiki working off of caching, which means that part of the copyrighted video would be actually stored on client's computers.

From:
http://www.kontiki.com/technology/index.html

The Kontiki Delivery Grid dynamically optimizes delivery from many PCs and media servers by caching content at the very edge of the network. This creates network efficiency gains of 10 to 25 times over traditional approaches.

It also brings legality into question for other distribution mechanisms, I would think. If Kontiki is legal, how would caching a bittorrent for an episode of "Lost" be any different?

IANAL, but I'm very interested in this, because while I understand that the producers of Lost grant only ABC distribution rights, then obviously it's not the mechanism, but the individual violation that is at fault. In other words, the success of Kontiki would basically ensure that Bittorrent would continue to be a legal distribution method, even if the content being distributed itself was not. Right?

While I'm not aware of any specific attacks on Bittorrent's legality, I know that it has been questioned before. We just had some legal cases with Grokster and others that even now have on their webpages that there is such a thing as "unauthorized peer-to-peer services". If Bittorrent is one of these, then why is Kontiki be considered not one?

Take a look at their technology provider's page — it looks like a similar system to BitTorrent, but with a specific content (and DRM) system built on top, as opposed to just being a networking system. It's certainly P2P, from what they describe.

While BitTorrent made the technology widely available, I don't think it was the first implementation either. Kontiki was using peer-based delivery in the late 1990's, albeit in a highly controlled environment.

Kontiki users who choose not install a client can receive content through standard client-free delivery (http://www.kontiki.com/products/deliverymanager/i ndex.html). I don't know if the BBC is taking that option.

Yes, according to the article they are using Geo-IP to ensure content is only avilable to UK residents. They will probably need some registration to restrict the content to license payers though.

The BBC have based their iMP on Kontiki, which last time I checked, was Windows only, WMP DRM. So all you Mac and Linux license payers will have to wait. And wait...

Kontiki's press release can be found here: http://www.kontiki.com/company/press/2004/pressrel ease041214.html

Also, AFAIK, the BBC uses IP address geo-coding to make sure that BBC content is only available to UK residents and license payers.

Groove Corporate File Sharing Software. Here is a Case Study that involved the navy.

A commercial branch of BT could be packaged up nicely as a spyware free alternative to things like kontiki which companys like gamespot.com use to send large files to non paying users but avoiding the bandwidth costs.

There's a Kontiki, Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA USA that has a peer-to-peer content distribution network product. Gamespot uses it like a "download manager," and they have some other large customers. I suspect this will cause a few problems for the Contiki folks... Kontiki was named based on the same story, too.

Kontiki - another dot-bomb by Kleiner Perkins

Enjoy!

Part of what makes this kind of research interesting is learning how to parallelize operations that we think of a serial with current technology.

The article mentions streaming a movie, which we typicaly think of as a server-to-client operation. However, companies like KonTiki are already using techniques (their buzzword is Adaptive Rate Multiserving, wah!) involving peer-to-peer parallel operation to solve these kinds of problems.

As far as people lying, cheating, and stealing, you may as well suggest that checks and credit cards will never be "functional."